"My five year old son has been waiting too long for an ENT outpatient appointment"

I am the parent of a little boy who has just turned five years of age. He has always been sick and he has had real problems with his ears. He had grommets fitted into his ears. One of these grommets fell out, I did not go along to the G.P. because I knew that we had a hospital appointment coming up soon. I waited for an appointment, a date came, this was then canceled by letter and a new appointment given to us. I went along to this appointment, I had taken my children out of school, got to the hospital, paid for parking, only to find out when I got to the Ear, Nose & Throat outpatients department at Southport Hospital that the appointment had already been canceled and had now been made for 14th May which was a long time to wait. I was very frustrated and felt annoyed, my little boy had been waiting for several weeks and it was going to be a long time before he was seen. I had not been informed that the appointment had been canceled. I mentioned to the receptionist what had happened, that my little boy could not wait any longer, she managed to give us the 7th May as a new date and wrote on it 'do not cancel this appointment'. She suggested that I complain about this. My little boy has been asking why he has not been seen at the hospital and why he has had to wait so long.

Responses

Thank you for taking the time to post your experience on this website. Unfortunately there are occasions when we have to cancel appointments and sometimes whole clinics. We always endeavour to give people as much notice of this as possible and indeed you say you received a letter from us saying the appointment had been canceled.

We cannot find record of us canceling a second appointment for your son, so we are a little confused by this. However, we have been able to bring forward your son’s next appointment by a week.